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The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln | History & Archaeology The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln | History & Ar... http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Th... Powered by The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln On the eve of his first inauguration, President Lincoln snuck into Washington in the middle of the night, evading the would-be assassins who waited for him in Baltimore By Daniel Stashower Illustration by Edward Kinsella III Smithsonian magazine, February 2013, As he awaited the outcome of the voting on election night, November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln sat expectantly in the Springfield, Illinois, telegraph office. The results came in around 2 a.m.: Lincoln had won. Even as jubilation erupted around him, he calmly kept watch until the results came in from Springfield, confirming that he had carried the town he had called home for a quarter century. Only then did he return home to wake Mary Todd Lincoln, exclaiming to his wife: “Mary, Mary, we are elected!” At the new year, 1861, he was already beleaguered by the sheer volume of correspondence reaching his desk in Springfield. On one occasion he was spotted at the post office filling “a good sized market basket” with his latest batch of letters, and then struggling to keep his footing as he navigated the icy streets. Soon, Lincoln took on an extra pair of hands to assist with the burden, hiring John Nicolay, a bookish young Bavarian immigrant, as his private secretary. Nicolay was immediately troubled by the growing number of threats that crossed Lincoln’s desk. “His mail was infested with brutal and vulgar menace, and warnings of all sorts came to him from zealous or nervous friends,” Nicolay wrote. “But he had himself so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly, even to his enemies, that it was hard for him to believe in political hatred so deadly as to lead to murder.” It was clear, however, that not all the warnings could be brushed aside. In the coming weeks, the task of planning Lincoln’s railway journey to his inauguration in the nation’s capital on March 4 would present daunting logistical and security challenges. The task would prove all the more formidable because Lincoln insisted that he utterly disliked “ostentatious display and empty pageantry,” and would make his way to Washington without a military escort. Far from Springfield, in Philadelphia, at least one railway executive—Samuel Morse Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad—believed that the president-elect had failed to grasp the seriousness of his position. Rumors had reached Felton—a stolid, bespectacled blueblood whose brother was president of Harvard at the time—that secessionists might be mounting a “deep-laid conspiracy to capture Washington, destroy all the avenues leading to it from the North, East, and West, and thus prevent the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln in the Capitol of the country.” For Felton, whose track formed a crucial link between Washington and the North, the threat against Lincoln and his government also 1 of 13 3/14/13 11:39 AM The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln | History & Ar... http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Th... constituted a danger to the railroad that had been his life’s great labor. “I then determined,” Felton recalled later, “to investigate the matter in my own way.” What was needed, he realized, was an independent operative who had already proven his mettle in the service of the railroads. Snatching up his pen, Felton dashed off an urgent plea to “a celebrated detective, who resided in the west.” By the end of January, with barely two weeks remaining before Lincoln was to depart Springfield, Allan Pinkerton was on the case. A Scottish immigrant, Pinkerton had started out as a cooper making barrels in a village on the Illinois prairies. He had made a name for himself when he helped his neighbors snare a ring of counterfeiters, proving himself fearless and quick-witted. He had gone on to serve as the first official detective for the city of Chicago, admired as an incorruptible lawman. By the time Felton sought him out, the ambitious 41-year-old Pinkerton presided over the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Among his clients was the Illinois Central Railroad. Felton’s letter landed on Pinkerton’s desk in Chicago on January 19, a Saturday. The detective set off within moments, reaching Felton’s office in Philadelphia only two days later. Now, as Pinkerton settled into a chair opposite Felton’s broad mahogany desk, the railroad president outlined his concerns. Shocked by what he was hearing, Pinkerton listened in silence. Felton’s plea for help, the detective said, “aroused me to a realization of the danger that threatened the country, and I determined to render whatever assistance was in my power.” Much of Felton’s line was on Maryland soil. In recent days four more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Georgia—had followed the lead of South Carolina and seceded from the Union. Louisiana and Texas would soon follow. Maryland had been roiling with anti-Northern sentiment in the months leading up to Lincoln’s election, and at the very moment that Felton poured out his fears to Pinkerton, the Maryland legislature was debating whether to join the exodus. If war came, Felton’s PW&B would be a vital conduit of troops and ammunition. Both Felton and Pinkerton appear to have been blind, at this early stage, to the possibility of violence against Lincoln. They understood that the secessionists sought to prevent the inauguration, but they had not yet grasped, as Felton would later write, that if all else failed, Lincoln’s life was to “fall a sacrifice to the attempt.” If the plotters intended to disrupt Lincoln’s inauguration—now only six weeks away—it was evident that any attack would come soon, perhaps even within days. The detective departed immediately for “the seat of danger”—Baltimore. Virtually any route that the president-elect chose between Springfield and Washington would pass through the city. A major port, Baltimore had a population of more than 200,000—nearly twice that of Pinkerton’s Chicago—making it the nation’s fourth-largest city, after New York, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, at the time a city in its own right. Pinkerton brought with him a crew of top agents, among them a new recruit, Harry Davies, a fair-haired young man whose unassuming manner belied a razor-sharp mind. He had traveled widely, spoke many languages and had a gift for adapting himself to any situation. Best of all from Pinkerton’s perspective, Davies possessed “a thorough knowledge of the South, its localities, prejudices, customs and leading men, which had been derived from several years residence in New Orleans and other Southern cities.” Pinkerton arrived in Baltimore during the first week of February, taking rooms at a boarding house near the Camden Street train station. He and his operatives fanned out across the city, mixing with crowds at saloons, hotels and restaurants to 2 of 13 3/14/13 11:39 AM The Unsuccessful Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln | History & Ar... http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=Th... gather intelligence. “The opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration was most violent and bitter,” he wrote, “and a few days’ sojourn in this city convinced me that great danger was to be apprehended.” Pinkerton decided to set up a cover identity as a newly arrived Southern stockbroker, John H. Hutchinson. It was a canny choice, as it gave him an excuse to make himself known to the city’s businessmen, whose interests in cotton and other Southern commodities often gave a fair index of their political leanings. In order to play the part convincingly, Pinkerton hired a suite of offices in a large building at 44 South Street. Davies was to assume the character of “an extreme anti-Union man,” also new to the city from New Orleans, and put himself up at one of the best hotels, Barnum’s. And he was to make himself known as a man willing to pledge his loyalty and his pocketbook to the interests of the South. Meanwhile, from Springfield, the president-elect offered up the first details of his itinerary. Lincoln announced that he would travel to Washington in an “open and public” fashion, with frequent stops along the way to greet the public. His route would cover 2,000 miles. He would arrive at Baltimore’s Calvert Street Station at 12:30 on the afternoon of Saturday, February 23, and depart Camden Street Station at 3. “The distance between the two stations is a little over a mile,” Pinkerton noted with concern. Instantly, the announcement of Lincoln’s imminent arrival became the talk of Baltimore. Of all the stops on the president- elect’s itinerary, Baltimore was the only slaveholding city apart from Washington itself; there was a distinct possibility that Maryland would vote to secede by the time Lincoln’s train reached its border. “Every night as I mingled among them,” Pinkerton wrote of the circles he infiltrated, “I could hear the most outrageous sentiments enunciated. No man’s life was safe in the hands of those men.” A timetable for Lincoln’s journey was supplied to the press. From the moment the train departed Springfield, anyone wishing to cause harm would be able to track his movements in unprecedented detail, even, at some points, down to the minute. All the while, moreover, Lincoln continued to receive daily threats of death by bullet, knife, poisoned ink—and, in one instance, spider-filled dumpling. *** In Baltimore, meanwhile, Davies set to work cultivating the friendship of a young man named Otis K.
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